Chapter 59: Information Warfare Is Still Warfare!
The freshly unveiled bracket produced an immediate, entirely predictable uproar.
The obvious read was that the old man was being deliberately vindictive: with thirteen Phase 4 passers in the room, he had designed a final phase that allowed only one person through.
The Chairman, to his credit, was just being eccentric rather than cryptic. After savoring the full spectrum of expressions around the room, he opened his mouth.
"Hohohohoho~~~~"
"Don't misunderstand. The passing condition for this phase is... you only need to win once."
"In other words, each winner steps aside one by one, while each loser advances to the next round. This continues until the very last person standing loses their final match and forfeits their qualification."
The strangling tension in the room unwound almost immediately.
Thirteen candidates, one elimination: at this stage of the exam, nobody in the room was going to privately cast themselves as the one who washed out.
Looking at the bracket as posted, it was not a standard even-elimination format. Gon, Ross, and a few others had a theoretical maximum of five matches, while Yusuke, Leorio, and Bodoro had only three.
There was immediate, open objection to the blatant imbalance. The Chairman offered a brief explanation.
The gist: based on each candidate's overall performance across all four preceding phases, combined with the previous day's individual interviews, the Hunter Association had produced a ranking of relative Hunter aptitude. Higher composite scores meant more opportunities to pass.
What the Chairman described in characteristically polished terms was, in practice, heavily weighted toward impression points — specifically, how much enthusiasm and genuine desire to become a Hunter each candidate had demonstrated in their interviews.
On raw strength alone, Killua and Yusuke had no business sitting at the same table as Bodoro and Leorio. But both had given answers with serious impression-score consequences.
When asked why he wanted to become a Hunter, Killua had simply said he was here for the fun of it. Making friends with Gon was clearly more important to him than any license, which he more or less admitted he didn't particularly care whether he got or not.
Yusuke had been blunt in a different direction: the words out of his mouth were effectively that Botan had suckered him into this, and he wouldn't be here otherwise.
Both impression scores collapsed. Both ended up at the same table as Leorio.
As for Illumi, there was nothing to say. He had only come for work.
"404, huh."
Looking at his assigned opponent on the bracket, Ross's gaze shifted to the figure not far away.
Dressed still in Kurta clan traditional clothing, features refined enough that Kuwabara would have given him the finger on principle: Kurapika.
Perhaps sensing Ross's gaze, Kurapika looked back without flinching.
Right. Every single person in the main cast was a stubborn one.
Gon held the undisputed top rank in sheer stubbornness, but the others weren't far behind.
This gave Ross a brief pause.
Well. If it's going to be like that, don't blame me for going outside the ring.
Having made that pleasant decision, Ross stopped looking at Kurapika entirely, which left the other boy momentarily confused.
"I will now announce the match schedule."
Beans, the Chairman's secretary, cleared his throat and began reading the lineup in a carrying voice.
"First match: Candidate 406, Ross, versus Candidate 404, Kurapika!"
"Second match..."
First match. Fine. Win early, rest early.
This exam had been running at high intensity for nearly two weeks straight. His body was probably holding together thanks to the Nen awakening and the Vitality Surge Z somewhere along the way, but his mind had accumulated its own fatigue. He genuinely needed rest.
"No restrictions on match format. Weapons allowed. No fouls. The sole win condition is making your opponent say 'I give up.'
However: killing your opponent during a match results in immediate disqualification. All remaining candidates at that point would be considered to have passed."
After announcing the full schedule, the Chairman added the rules clarification. In practice: no rules.
This had been legible throughout all four previous phases. The Hunter world was unforgiving. Even here, surrounded by this many powerful people who could enforce some degree of order, there were still enough sharp edges. Out in the field executing an actual mission, it was genuinely lawless. No rules. No floor.
"Final phase — begin!"
"First match! Candidates 406 and 404, Ross and Kurapika, please step forward!"
Both stepped into the arena.
Kurapika's baseline impression of Ross amounted to the Man-Faced Ape incident. He didn't underestimate him — everyone who had made it this far had something to show for it — but he had no detailed read on what Ross actually brought.
"I'll state this upfront: I have a reason I absolutely cannot lose."
Because they were strangers, Kurapika didn't open with drawn weapons. He stood with his paired short blades still sheathed, connected by their cord, in a composed ready stance.
What he hadn't expected was the other boy nodding with an expression of complete understanding.
"I know. But I can tell you right now — you're going to concede voluntarily."
Then Ross simply walked toward Kurapika, who had already settled into his stance, in full view of everyone in the room.
Kurapika was genuinely puzzled by the confident declaration. He detected no fighting intent, no killing intent whatsoever coming from Ross. He tracked Ross's approach with sharp attention, neither backing away nor responding.
When the two of them were close enough that speaking quietly would reach, Ross leaned slightly and said it low, directly into Kurapika's ear.
"I know the whereabouts of a pair of scarlet eyes."
In almost the same instant, Kurapika's black irises converted entirely into a brilliant ruby red, and his entire body went visibly, acutely rigid.
Ross stepped back two paces and gave him space, watching quietly as Kurapika stood there, eyes burning with emotion too intense to contain, the change in his irises entirely involuntary.
You couldn't deny it. Not for nothing were those eyes the most widely sought of the seven legendary beauties of the Hunter world. Right now, in this moment, Kurapika's scarlet irises were genuinely extraordinary.
Ross privately thought that only the living could give that color its full vitality. The people who collected those eyes as trophies had no appreciation for what they were destroying.
"...Your terms?"
"Concede voluntarily."
"Judge! I concede!"
Kurapika, who had been bracing himself to push through this round on willpower and pride alone, made the decision on the spot.
He had no choice. Ross had found the one thing that could reach him.
As the sole survivor of the Kurta clan, the entire purpose left to Kurapika was to recover the eyes of his massacred kinsmen, eyes still carrying the grief and fury of the dead, and return them home along with everything owed to the Phantom Troupe.
This was the one thing Kurapika would give ground for. At least for now.
The thought "what if he's lying" had crossed his mind. He still couldn't risk it. Even if Ross turned out to be a liar, he could not afford to ignore even the slimmest possibility.
And if Ross was lying, there would be a reckoning.
Amid the collective sigh of disappointment from everyone who had hoped for an actual fight, the judge announced Ross as the winner and Kurapika as the loser advancing to the next round. Then Kurapika moved straight to Ross's side with the focused intensity of someone one wrong word away from drawing his blades.
Ross had no reason to string him along. He gave him the specifics right there.
"September. The Yorknew City auction. A pair of scarlet eyes will appear as one of the lots."